A cigarette
sitting in a cliche orange prescription bottle
the tobacco-stuffed tip
peaking out half an inch from the top

on it
scrawled in black ink:
miluji tě

it's author,
gone for a week and a half in a rehab center

left that morning with wet hair from the shower
long black tights around her legs
and a huge hiking bag which consumed the back of her figure
as she was walking out the door.

i imagine she wrote these words in her mother tongue
after she rolled the cigarette herself
to her boyfriend
a Texan
depressed, anxious, lost
then plunked it into the small bottle
which bore her name on its label

into the flourescently orange plastic,
symbolic of her dependency, of
the missing pieces

a flower in a vase:
miluji tě

and then she was ready to go